Album Review: Nemesea - White Flag

There's an old adage about perfection being boring. It sounds counter-intuitive, until you stop to give it some thought. Science allows us to create algorithms to show us the closest thing to objective perfection possible, but the things that capture our attention are always flawed. Whether that's music with a bum note in it, a movie with an obvious plot-hole, or a person with a scar or a mole or a crooked nose. Nothing that's perfect is as interesting as something that is beautiful in its imperfection. Sadly, there are a lot of bands that don't realize this, and they try like hell to make their music as beautiful as possible, which tends to strip away all of the character we would have fallen in love with.

It's not fair to pin all of that on Nemesea. They merely gave me to opportunity to say that.

Nemesea's sound is one trying to blend electronic elements and a goth-tinged alternative rock, but they do so in a way that is so polished, so perfect, it loses all of the bite it could have had. Look no further than the single, "Kids With Guns". It's supposed to be a protest song decrying the violence our society imparts on kids, but it's played with such a sterile environment, and then backed up with a choir of children singing, that it doesn't sound like it has a single ounce of anger behind it. The song is the equivalent of an academic white-paper running through the statistics of gun violence. There's no 'there' there.

The band's music is labeled 'alternative rock', and maybe that's what's throwing me off. I remember when alternative was first emerging in the 90s, and the common thread among all the bands was a gritty aesthetic (initially created by their lack of funding) that played against the mainstream sound. Nemesea has none of that. This album is sleek and polished, and is trying hard to fit in with the mainstream. That's not at all what alternative rock was ever supposed to be. This is another instance where nomenclature gets in the way of the music. My expectations were set by their own PR, and that let me down.

But how is the music, when considered for what it is? It's... ok. The electronic bits are never present enough to drive the album's identity, and the rock bits are mostly just strummed chords, so there isn't much interesting happening on the instrumental level. There aren't any beats or riffs that are going to catch your attention. That puts all of the focus on the vocals, and the melodies just aren't sharp enough to carry that load. There are a few really good tracks here, such as the title track in particular, but these songs aren't the most memorable.

And that comes back to my initial point. Nemesea is trying to make their music so beautiful that there's nothing to grasp on to. There isn't that little flaw, that beauty mark, we can point to and say THAT is what I love about them. "White Flag" is akin to the product of an algorithm, an album designed to hit all the marks of success. It may in fact do that, but I don't want to listen to what the formula tells me I should like. I want to hear a band, and I don't really get that from this record. It's trying so hard to be everything that nothing shines through. It's perfectly pleasant, but bland. It's a musical lettuce wrap.